Savings Challenge for 2010

I've always been one to pick up pennies. But I've never been one to save them.

Years ago, I have a friend who saved pennies. She bought one of those big water jugs--the kind you take to the store to refill--and filled it with pennies--just pennies. It took her 3 years to fill it. When she cashed it in, she had accumulated $300 of money that she would have never really known she had. I was impressed enough to go buy myself a water jug. I'd get about an inch of change in there (I saved ALL coins, not just pennies), but then I would get low on cash and see that jug sitting there...and you can figure out what happened next. That was about 8 years ago and I gave up.


A few days ago I was at the grocery store and a woman had a zip-lock bag of coins that she was dumping into one of those coin-counting machines. She'd only dumped in half the bag at the point I walked by and the screen, which was counting her money as she dumped it, was reading out $27.00, $28.00, $29.00...

I was impressed.

 I decided at that point to return to my plan to save coins, but for me to really make this work, it's going to have to be a goal--a challenge for myself. So here it is:

For the remainder of 2010, I vow to save every coin I have, whether from change or from the parking lot.

For the remainder of 2010, when using cash, I will ONLY spend dollar bills on items, no matter how small the overage is. If I get 98 cents in change, it will go into the jug. I will not use 2 pennies from my purse.

For the remainder of 2010, I will empty my coin purse every night before bed into my money jug.

For the remainder of 2010, I WILL NOT count the coins I have saved (so as to not tempt myself) and I will paint my money jug so I cannot see the inside of it.

For the remainder of 2010, if I find that the jug is full before December 31st, I will take the coins to a change machine, cash it in, and deposit that amount into a separate savings account.

At the end of 2010, I will use the funds I have accumulated to take my three children on a vacation--after all, this is money I'm not really missing as I go through the year so I may as well just make a memory, have some fun and enjoy life a little bit :O)

I've already begun this process. It really makes me take a moment to think about those tiny little purchases. The taco I purchased last night was 99 cents...$1.07 after tax. So I put the 97 cents I received in change in my savings coin purse and realized that the taco just cost me $2.00, not 99 cents. But the change that I got back would have been puttered away without my realizing where it went anyway, so now, instead, I've saved that 97 cents for a family vacation.

For the remainder of 2010, I will be researching great family vacation spots! It'll be a little bit difficult because I truly have no idea how much I will have to spend on this vacation until that final day of the challenge. But I imagine that if a water jug full of pennies equals about $300, then a water jug full of all coins will come up to WAY more than that! My goal is to fill at least 3 water jugs with pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and possibly dollar coins by December 31st. Talk about a Happy New Year!!!

This is going to be a lot of fun! I think I might even ask the kids to join in and bring me coins when they have them--it can be a family challenge. Matthew and Bethany would both really enjoy having something for us to be working on together and we all get to reap the benefits of our hard work together! Win-Win!